Well, it's no
, but
was free (@ Internet Archive), so unless I find $150 (+ a few $ for shipping) in my sofa cushions, this is as good as it's likely to get.
I wasn't too sure about choosing this as my next Daily Devotional Reading, so I checked it out from Internet Archive and read "Humphrey Jennings and This Book" by his daughter, Mary Sally Jennings (pages vii through xiii), "Editorial Tasks and Methods" by Charles Madge (pages xv through xxi), "The Images: A Chronological List (pages xxiii through xxii), and " Illustrations" (pages xxxiii though xxxiv). What's the difference between an Image and an Illustration? I dunno, I'll have to get back to you on that. But there were lots in interesting things in there...including a reference to The Iron Man which I'm anxious to follow up on...and at least a half-dozen references to William Blake, so I'm just about all in in this. Let me have a look at "Introduction" before I decide. Just give me a minute.
Check out the first paragraph:
Kinda cantankerous, ennit? I like that in a man.
ANYway... the Introduction was written up by the aforementioned Charles Madge, based upon "extensive notes" by Humphrey Jennings, and it was quite good, quite interesting and well-written.
I'm almost ready to commit.
Let's see...xxxix + 376 = 415 pages, which would be a two week (-ish) commitment.
Okay? Okay.
Day 1 (DDRD 2,407) June 3, 2024
Read to end of page 9.
"In this book, the building of Pandaemonium is equated with the industrial revolution and the coming if the machine." (5)
Pandaemonium being the capital of Hell in John Milton's Paradise Lost, which seems apt to me.
Ah, it's a miscellany. A collection of writings on The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on London. Maybe more than just London, news as it happens. But so far London.
Day 2 (DDRD 2,408) June 4, 2024
Read to page 39. An interesting read...especially a bit from Daniel Defoe about meeting a family who lived in a cave (!), but not an easy read. I get that we're assembling a mosaic which will, in the end, show a damning picture of the effects if the Industrial Revolution, but I don't understand what bugs and dragons have to do with that.
Nevertheless, I persisted.
Human beings were not thought of as "machine-like" until "labour begins to be organized on a ruthlessly rational basis." (12) If true, that says a lot about the effects of society upon the human being...very much in the J. J. Rousseau mode of chains. ⛓ But is it true? Shake-speare had Hamlet close a letter to Ophelia with this line:
'Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst
this machine is to him, HAMLET.'
Was labour organized on a ruthlessly rational basis in the early 1600s (the latest the play could have been written)? The Muddied didn't hit the ground until a couple of centuries later, so I'm thinking NO. But hey, Shake-speare was always a century or two ahead of his time.
BTW, I tried a lazy search for the Hamlet quote (to make sure I got it right) by typing Hamlet machine into Googke, and urns out there's a play called Hamletmachine Out There. I'm going to check it out later, and you can, too, @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw1MQhdjYYY.
And hey...let's be careful out there.
So...the Water-Insect, or Gnat...then The Great Gogled-Eyed Beetle...what's up with the bugs? Hopefully all will soon be made clear.
BTW...6,783 more visits and I hit 3/4ths of a million blog views. Very exciting!
Read to page 70.
"A love of power is predominant in every creature: a love to punish is often attendant upon that power. The man who delights in punishment is more likely to inflict it than the offender to deserve it. He who feels for another will not torture from choice. A merciful judge punishes with regret, a tyrant with pleasure. He who mourns over chastisement he must inflict will endeavor to reduce it: one displays a great, the other a little mind." (48)
There's a piece of poetry by one Christopher Smart entitled "Rejoice in the Lamb" which rattles on for five pages (55 to 59), and most of the lines are gibberishy--like "For the Shears is the first of the mechanical powers, and to be used on the knees. / For if Adam had used this instrument right, he would not have fallen." (56) What the fuckety fuck is going on THERE? 🤷 But just as my brain was fogging over, this came swinging at me: "For nothing is so real as that which us spiritual." (58) Well. It's kind of hard to argue with that, isn't it? Unless you simply deny the spiritual aspect of being...which seems immensely and determinedly ignorant to me...then I think you have to accept this as a priori. Spirit is superior to weak flesh. There is no part of your flesh...or your possessions, etcetera...which is more valuable than your spirit. The whole point of the Job story is that nothing physical defines you or your worth. (Please note: I despise the Job story. How anyone could believe in and revere a God who kills innocent people and destroys a man's life in order to win a bet is beyond me.) We are spirits in the material world.
ADDENDUM: The Internet Archive version of this book is kind of dark--
--so I had a look at the Kindle free preview. That version had a different cover
It's worth your time if you have a dime...and 35 minutes.
Day 4 (DDRD 2,410) June 6, 2024
Read to page 100. Echoes, light reflected in eyeballs, rioters, guys going up in balloons...what's it all about, Alfie? It's usually interesting, but not all of the pieces fit for me. And compelling it is not. Meanwhile, I've really been getting pulled into The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, which has been great fun. Balance is all.
Day 5 (DDRD 2,411) June 7, 2024
Lastly, mention was made of a book that (1) sounds interesting & (2) is available via Internet Archive: A Man Without a Mask by J. Bronowski, a study of William Blake. https://archive.org/details/williamblake175700bronrich/mode/1up
Read to page 130. Interesting bit of Overview injected into the proceedings:
Also: "...I seldom read, except to amuse myself--and I am almost always reading...." S. T. Coleridge to John Thelwall
One other drawback to reading this book on Internet Archive is that the reproduction of the drawings is kind of shitty sometimes:
Lastly, mention was made of a book that (1) sounds interesting & (2) is available via Internet Archive: A Man Without a Mask by J. Bronowski, a study of William Blake. https://archive.org/details/williamblake175700bronrich/mode/1up
Day 6 (DDRD 2,412) June 8, 2024
Read to page 160.
Hey, look...it's Lord Byron being a smartass!
Also hit some first person descriptions of The Peterloo Massacre, and even though I am familiar with the incident, it was horrifying to read the details.
Day 7 (DDRD 2,413) June 9, 2024
Read to page 190. Next section up: The Iron Man.
Day 8 (DDRD 2,414) June 10, 2024
Day 9 (DDRD 2,415) June 11, 2024
Read to page 220.
Well, The Iron Man turned out to be about a yarn-making machine, so that was disappointing, but I found this bit to be moving...and must admit that my mind has often been pulled in this direction:
Also found thus funny and even delightful: "Going at a tremendous rate--no less than thirty-six miles an hour!" Those were the days (1839), eh?
And here's a Things Never Change for you: "...keep the people aggrieved and we will keep power by reclaiming against those grievances." [Btw, this is a criticism of how the Whigs and Tories operated, not approval of a strategy.]
General Sir Charles James Napier, GCB
August 1782 – 29 August 1853
Also, how about this:
"That if an orator excited them to overt acts of treason, burning, murder, he should be arrested after the crowd dispersed...."
Yep. And all I can say is, "If only."
Read to page 252. Hmpf. So maybe 4 days to go? I think I want to read a book book next. The Kindle is fine and even necessary at times (such as who hen a bikini want to read costs $150), but nothing is as good as a book book.
"I cannot imagine what the world will come to, if it goes on much longer." Architect A. W. Pugin, 1849
Yep.
There was a reference made to Primrose Hill, which caused me to post this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ntPFNFbPb0
Day 10 (DDRD 2,416) June 12, 2024
Read to page 280.
So...this dude invents a device which uses leeches to predict when storms are coming. Yowza.
Day 11 (DDRD 2,417) June 13, 2024
Read to page 310.
So there is a talking beetle, and he shows a man a great pyramid, then he shrinks it down until he can hold it. This was written by John Ruskin, who I read at some point in my early college days at Bellarmine. I didn't think he was such a weirdo. Maybe I need to read some more Ruskin.
Day 12 (DDRD 2,418) June 14, 2024
Read to page 340. And the text ends on page 356, so tomorrow ought to do it!
There've been a few quotes from T. H. Huxley, and every time I hit one I'm reminded of the set of collected essays so purchased and started to read some years ago. It was good stuff. Might make for a good next DDR, ya know?
A puzzling sentence from Samuel Butler, after discussing the superiority of machines to human beings: "This is the green tree; what then shall be done in the dry?"
I can't make anything of it. Here's the whole ¶ if you want to give it a shot:
“And take man’s vaunted power of calculation. Have we not engines which can do all manner of sums more quickly and correctly than we can? What prizeman in hypothetics at any of our Colleges of Unreason can compare with some of these machines in their own line? In fact, wherever precision is required man flies to the machine at once, as far preferable to himself. Our sum-engines never drop a figure, nor our looms a stitch; the machine is brisk and active, when the man is weary; it is clear-headed and collected, when the man is stupid and dull; it needs no slumber, when man must sleep or drop; even at its post, ever ready for work, its alacrity never flags, its patience never gives in; its might is stronger than combined hundreds, and swifter than the flight of birds; it can burrow beneath the earth, and walk upon the largest rivers and sink not. This is the green tree; what then shall be done in the dry?"
WTFF?
New word:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/darg
Things I just learned about tallow:
There was a passage about cowboys taking tallow candles and letting them drip into their biscuits, so I had to look up tallow to see what it was (and hoping it wasn't wax).
"Tallow is the rendered down suet fat (also known as leaf fat) of ruminant animals like cows and sheep. Not pork however, rendered fat from pigs is called lard.
"Suet is the nutrient dense hard fat that’s found surrounding the animal’s organs, specifically the kidneys and loins.
"Beef suet is a harder, more crumbly fat than the rest of the fat within the animal, and it’s one of nature’s highest sources of conjugated linoleic acid CLA."
https://www.myherbalapothecary.com.au/what-is-tallow-uses-benefits-how-to-render-your-own/
Of novels, Charles Darwin had this to say: "A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily - against which a law ought to be passed. A novel according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman, all the better."
And this looks interesting: After London: or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies, a post-apocalyptic novel written in 1885 (!).
Day 13 (DDRD 2,419) June 15, 2024
Read to page 376, The End.
2 comments:
The Old Testament reading in church today was Ezekiel 17:22-24, which ends with, "I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish." Still "This is the green tree; what then shall be done in the dry" is a weird sentence, but I was struck with the synchronicity and wanted to share.
That is an incredible coincidence! And I don't think there's any doubt that the puzzling sentence in Pandemonium was an allusion to that Bible verse. We're in The Matrix now! Thanks for that!
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